Nine Lives
by MoonChild1993
Summary: Two parts. Spoilers for last week's episode. Carol has taken off. Daryl and Morgan go search for her.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note: Hey, y'all! So, last week's episode has been bothering me all week. I hate what has happened with Carol and what will probably happen with Daryl. I'm terrified for both of them. Unfortunately, I don't think one of them is going to make it out alive this season, and it breaks my heart. So, I decided to write how I think the rest of this season should play out between them. I need this story to go to as a happy place in case the worst does actually happen. Hope y'all enjoy!**

Daryl Dixon jogged to Rick's house, his heart hammering in his chest. Rick calling an emergency meeting was never a good thing.

When he walked in, everyone was gathered in the living room. He nodded at the few people that caught his gaze. He leaned against the door frame, waiting for Rick, who was standing in front of the group, to say what he had to say.

While he waited, his eyes searched for Carol, the one person he always looked for in a room. She was nowhere to be found. What the hell?

Rick cleared his throat, and the room went silent.

"We have a situation, and I need everyone-" Rick paused to give Daryl a knowing look, "-to stay calm and not doing anything rash."

Daryl felt his face turn red.

"Sometime during the night, Carol left Alexandria. She left a note."

Rick gestured to a man sitting on the couch, Tobin, Daryl thought his name was. The big man stepped forward and presented a sheet of paper to Rick. Then he sat back down.

Daryl listened intently while Rick read the letter to the group. He couldn't believe what he was hearing. She couldn't kill anymore? She needed to get away from the people she loved? Don't come after her? It made no sense.

He knew, probably better than most of the group, that she'd been really messed up since she'd been taken by the Saviors. Something had happened, something she still wouldn't talk about, that shook her to her core and made her question everything about herself.

Daryl felt a part of himself he thought he lost months ago suddenly resurface. Anger ignited a slow burn in his body. He was changing into someone he hadn't been since the beginning of the end of the world: a crazy, pissed-off redneck.

He stormed out. He didn't want to hear anything else Rick had to say. He had to go after her before she got herself killed, or worse, killed herself.

Just as he suspected, Rick was right on his heels, along with Morgan and Tobin.

"Daryl, stop! Let's talk about this!"

"Ain't nothing to talk about! Not gonna sit around while the rest of you pussies come up with a game plan!"

Someone grabbed his shoulder and jerked him hard, forcing him to turn around and stop. He should have known it was Rick; he was the only bastard crazy enough to touch him. Before Daryl could stop himself, he landed a blow to Rick's cheek, knocking him to the ground.

The rest of the group was starting to chase after them.

Rick stood up, holding his cheek. Yeah, he'd definitely have a bruise there later.

"Daryl, I know you want to go after, but she could be anywhere by now. It's not safe out there. She said herself not to come after her. We have to respect that."

Daryl got right in Rick's face.

"You gonna try and stop me?" he said, voice low.

"Alright, alright. Everyone needs to calm down. Let's think about this," Morgan said, stepping between the two men. Daryl backed up a few steps.

"Already thought about it. I'm goin' after her. End of story."

"Daryl, you need to think of the risks-"

"I don't give a shit about the risks. I'm bringin' her back."

"Then I'll go with you," Morgan said, "You don't have to go alone."

Daryl wanted to argue, but he agreed. It would be good to have one more person with him, even if said person was against killing other humans.

"I'd like to go too, if that's okay. I don't know much about tracking, but I'm a decent shot."

Daryl turned to stare at Tobin. He felt that anger rise again.

"What the hell's your role in all this?" Daryl inquired, "Why'd you have her note?"

Tobin had the decency to look afraid. He should be, Daryl thought.

"Carol and I…we've been…together…for the past few weeks. She left the note for me in her bedroom this morning."

Daryl just stared at him with wild eyes. Carol and…Tobin? Together? She hadn't said one word to him about it. Sure, he'd seen them talk a few times, but that was it. He had no clue.

Pain ripped through his chest like the blade of a knife. All this time, in a weird sort of way, he'd thought of Carol as his. She was his best friend, his confidant. They joked around, told each other everything, saved each other. That's how it had been from the start. Now, knowing she was with someone else, it hurt, and he wasn't quite sure why.

So, in his anger and grief, Daryl did the only thing he could think of to do: he punched Tobin square in the face and watched him drop the ground like a sack of potatoes. Today was a good day for dealing out blows, apparently.

Daryl walked away. He didn't have time for anymore of anyone else's shit. He heard footsteps following behind him.

Morgan didn't say a word to him as he went home to retrieve some extra weapons and his bike.

When he rode up to the main gate, Morgan was already waiting for him in a car. They nodded at each other before setting off in search of Carol.

* * *

They didn't get very far. About two miles down the road, they came across the aftermath of a major fight. A car, presumably driven by Carol, was pulled onto the side of the road. A metal rod stuck out of the car, covered in blood. There was a pool of blood on the ground beside the car, along with Carol's rosary.

Seven Saviors lay dead in the road and on the grass.

"She couldn't have gotten far," Daryl commented. He hoped she'd killed every last one of those sons of bitches. He prayed she hadn't been taken. Again.

He walked around, looking for tracks, and found a path of drops of blood leading into the forest.

"This way," Daryl beckoned to Morgan, stepping into the woods.

They walked for what felt like an eternity, following the blood trail.

He heard a whimper come from somewhere. He raised his bow. Beside him, Morgan got into a fighting stance.

They kept walking.

He found her sitting on a log in a small clearing, trying to tend to a wound on her side.

She jumped when she saw them.

"Daryl? Morgan? What are y'all doing here?" She asked, her voice pained.

"We could ask you the same thing," Daryl growled, walking over.

"Let me look at it," he instructed.

"Those assholes ambushed me on the road. I pretended to be helpless, killed all of 'em except one."

Daryl looked at Morgan, and they had an entire conversation in one glance.

Morgan nodded.

"I'll head back to the road, see if I see anyone. I'll wait for y'all there."

"Got impaled on that metal rod, huh?" Daryl asked, looking at the wound. The rod had gone right through the skin, missing any vital organs or arteries.

"Yeah. Son of a bitch shoved me. Didn't realize it was there."

"Went clean through. Should heal alright, but we gotta get you back home."

Carol lowered her shirt now that she was all bandaged up.

"Daryl, no."

"Why not?" He demanded.

"I can't go back. I can't be a killer anymore. I won't."

He just stood there, dumbfounded.

"What the hell are you talkin' about? You ain't no damn killer! You're a survivor! We all are! It's kill or be killed out here! You know that!" He was yelling, but he didn't care. He had to make her come back.

"Yes, I am, Daryl!" She was starting to cry.

"All this time, I've been telling myself that I was one of the good guys, that all these killings were justified, for the greater good. But I'm no different than the people that are trying to kill us right now. Where does it end, Daryl? I can't be a murderer for the rest of my life."

His eyes blazed, and he stepped closer.

"You ain't gonna have a rest of your life if you go out on your own and stop killin'. You think any of us like killin'? Hell no, but it's what we have to do to survive. It's how we live. These assholes, these Saviors? They ain't all they cracked up to be. Glenn found pictures them assholes was keeping of all the skulls they'd bashed in. Other people, just like us. Took their shit and bashed their brains in. We're still the good guys."

She was crying hard now, the hardest he'd seen her cry since Sophia's death. It was like months of pent-up emotions were pouring out of her.

He crushed her to his chest, holding her through the pain as she wept.

"I'm so tired, Daryl. I can't do this anymore." She whispered.

"You don't got to anymore. I'll protect ya," He felt like he sounded stupid, but he meant every word. He would take this burden from her.

She lifted her head to look up at him. His whole body went warm at her gaze. Something had just changed between them, and it both terrified and excited him.

She placed a hand on his cheek and kissed him. He broke away immediately and hung his head, embarrassed. They stared at each other for a moment before both of them crashed together. Daryl had both his hands on her cheeks, pressing his lips to hers, and Carol had her arms wrapped around his waist, pulling him in as close as she could get.

When they finally pulled away from each other, they were smiling like idiots.

"C'mon, we're goin' home," he told her. He walked around her to the log where she'd dropped her stuff and bent down to pick up her few belongings. When he stood up, he watched her, just standing there, her fingers pressed to her lips.

She turned to smile at him. Then her eyes got wide. Daryl heard a breath of movement behind him and a scream launch itself from her throat before he dropped to his knees and the world went black.

 **Author's Note: Hope y'all enjoyed my therapy session! Leave a review and let me know your thoughts! Part two will be coming soon!**


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note: Hey! So, here's part two. Now, I haven't made it to Negan in the comics yet, so I don't know too much about him, other than things we've found out from TWD. If he seems totally out of character here, I apologize. I just tried to make him as mean and crazy as I could. I hope y'all enjoy!**

Daryl came to slowly. The pain in his skull was killing him; he wanted to drift back off into the darkness, but he forced his eyes to open. Bad decision. Sunlight pierced his eyes, made him shut them tight again.

"Hi."

Daryl jerked, his eyes fluttering open and closed again. His head moved from side to side, trying to find out where the voice had come from.

His eyes finally rested on a man standing over to his left, looking down at him.

The guy was huge; he wore black jeans and a black leather jacket. His face was tanned and his black eyes were menacing. He had a baseball bat resting on his shoulder, the wider part wrapped in something shiny that Daryl couldn't quite make out. Barbed wire, maybe?

He wished this was all a dream. He wanted to close his eyes and wake up in his bed in Alexandria. His eyes closed; what the hell? It couldn't hurt to try.

No luck. When he opened them, that big asshole was still there, smiling down at him.

"I'm Negan."

A chill ran through Daryl's body. So, this was Negan. The mysterious leader of the Saviors.

Negan started to walk slowly around him. The more Daryl's vision cleared, the more Saviors he could see standing around him, weapons in their hands, smirks on their faces.

"And you're Daryl. The stone-faced archer from Alexandria. I've heard a lot about you."

Daryl groaned.

"Oh, yeah?"

"Oh, good, you can talk. Yeah, Dwight over here's told me a lot about you. Actually, I kind of feel like I'm in the presence of greatness right now," Negan said with a laugh.

Daryl sat up slowly, which was hard to do when your head was pounding and your hands and feet were bound. What the hell was he talking about?

"You know, I was there that day. The day you blew up my men? You remember that?"

"Yeah, I remember."

Negan nodded, "Yeah, I figured you did. Hard to forget something like that. There y'all were, with our truck and our weapons. I thought my men had it for sure. They were supposed to kill all of you, take back what was ours."

He started laughing, the sound booming in the silence.

"And then here you come with a goddamn rocket launcher! I mean, shit! And then there's an explosion and all my men are gone! I couldn't believe it. I watched you, and I thought to myself, it's a shame that we didn't get to him first. He would be a great Savior. It's too bad I'll have to kill him."

Daryl heard several gasps and cries coming from his right. He turned his head, wincing at the pain, and saw his family on their knees in front of some Saviors, bound and gagged. Carol, Rick, Michonne, and Glenn.

He understood why Carol was there but not the rest of them. Had they come looking for them?

His eyes scanned the clearing, looking for Morgan. He wasn't there. Good, Daryl thought to himself. One less person's death I'll be responsible for.

As Negan paced, Daryl looked at each one of the people he'd come to love so much, some he'd been with since the beginning of this whole shit storm. And now, they were about to die because of him.

He tried to tell himself that they could make it out of this; hell, they'd escaped from goddamned cannibals, but he knew this would be a losing fight. They were surrounded by Saviors, and their weapons were gone.

"So, here's the situation, Daryl. You're all going to die. That's a given. But since I'm a nice guy, I'm going to let you decide how this goes. You wanna go first, and then I'll take the rest of them out. Or would you like me to start with one of your friends?"

Carol began to start crying then, whimpering around her gag. Tears were falling down her face, and she was breathing heavily, almost as if she were having a panic attack.

All eyes fell on her. Daryl shook his head at her, confused. What the hell was she doing?

Negan looked from Daryl to Carol.

"So, Daryl, this your woman?" 

"No. Just a friend."

"Really? Just a friend? Does that mean she's up for grabs, then?"

Negan started to walk towards her.

He grabbed her arm, forced her to stand, and walked her toward Daryl. When she was standing beside him, he pushed down on her shoulder, hard, forcing her to drop to her knees.

"She's a beauty, Daryl. You should've been hittin' that. Too late for that now, though."

Daryl glared. Carol tried to speak around her math.

Negan bent down and pulled out the gag.

"What's that, sweetheart?"

"Please, kill me first," she begged in between sobs. "I don't want to watch my loved ones die. I'm so afraid. Please."

Negan nodded and backed away, started his pacing again.

"It's Carol, right?"

Carol nodded.

"I know some things about you too, Carol. I know you've killed a bunch of my people. I also know you're not as weak as you appear, so you can shut up with the crying and blubbering bullshit. In fact, you're really not that different from Daryl here."

Daryl noticed her breathing had somewhat returned to normal, but she was still crying.

"So, Daryl, what's it gonna be? Who's going first?"

"Me," Daryl said instantly. Carol whimpered again. He didn't dare look at her.

Negan nodded, looked like he was thinking about it.

"Yeah, I take back what I said, Daryl. I think I'm going to let Lucille decide who goes first. Dwight, bring the rest of them up here, would ya?"

Dwight and another man brought the rest of the group forward, lining them up side by side on the grass. Well, so much for Daryl dying first and giving them a chance to escape.

They looked around anxiously, trying to figure out who Lucille was. A girlfriend or wife perhaps?

Negan swung his bat like a baseball player would, as if he were warming up for a game. It hit Daryl then that Lucille wasn't a person; she was the bat.

"This here's Lucille," he said, waving the bat.

He walked up to Rick and pointed the bat at his chest. It was in fact, covered with barbed wire.

"Eenie," Negan said. Then the bat moved to Michonne's chest.

"Meenie."

Now it was aimed at Glenn.

"Miney."

Now he was in front of Daryl.

"Moe."

He aimed the bat at Carol.

"Catch."

Before he got back to Rick, he stopped.

"Y'all are probably wondering why a grown man would use a nursery rhyme to decide who he kills first. An odd choice, I know, but it was always one of my favorites. Besides, I think we can all agree it's pretty good for decision making."

He kept going.

Daryl could feel his anxiety spike up. He looked over at Carol. She was already staring at him, blue eyes wide and glassy. He could tell in her gaze that she knew they weren't making it out of this either.

"It's me," she whispered, fresh tears falling down her face.

It took him a second to realize what she meant. She must have played out the rest of the rhyme in her head and figured out it would land on her last.

His blood ran cold; it was suddenly hard to breathe. He shook his head, wanting this nightmare to be over, wanting someone to swoop in and save them. He couldn't lose her. Not after everything they'd been through. Not after what had just happened in those woods.

That moment in the woods would be their first and last kiss.

"Eenie." The bat was pointing at Michonne.

"Meenie." Now Glenn.

"Miney." Now him.

"Moe."

She'd been right. Rick, Michonne, and Glenn were screaming through their gags. More tears fell down Carol's cheeks.

Daryl glared up at Negan.

"Hey, asshole, we had a deal. You said I could choose, so I'm choosin' myself."

Negan shook his head.

"Had is the key word, there, Daryl. Had a deal. But I changed my mind. What can I say? I'm not exactly a man of honor. Besides, I think I like this much better. I was going to kill you outright, one hit for everyone of my men you killed. I'm still going to do that, but this way you get to watch your girl go first. I think I'll do the same to her. One blow for every one of my men you killed.

"Dwight, Marvin, move the rest of them back. I'm going to need swingin' room."

Daryl was jerked up from the ground and pushed back several feet. A gag was placed in his mouth. Then he was pushed back down to the ground, knees aching from the impact.

His eyes rolled around wildly in his head, trying to find a way out of this. Carol was all by herself now. Negan circled her like a shark.

"Carol, turn around for me, would ya?" Negan asked. She did.

"Thanks," he told her, "I just can't stand to look at a woman when I kill her."

Carol's eyes met his. He tried to tell her everything he'd never been able to say to her with only his eyes.

I'm sorry. You've always been my best friend and the only one that really understood me. My only regret is that we never shared that kiss sooner. I love you.

He knew he was crying, but he didn't care. She was crying too. Her eyes seemed to say it's okay, Daryl. I forgive you. I love you too.

He was screaming now, although it was all muffled around the gag.

Negan moved the bat, ready to strike.

He swung, the blow landing on her arm. She cried out and fell over on her other side, the one that was already injured.

He tried to get to her, but several Saviors held him in place.

The next blow landed on her thigh.

The third landed on her hip.

She was covered in blood now from the barbed wire. She cried out and moaned. Two more hits to the ribs.

She curled in on herself, and Daryl knew she didn't have much longer left.

The next swing was aimed down at the side of her face; he held the bat like a golf club now. Daryl knew that when he took that swing, it would kill her. He cried and screamed harder. Fought with all his might to get to her.

Negan swung, but the blow never hit her the way it should have. Instead it kissed her cheek, the barbed wire taking out chunks of flesh.

Negan dropped to the ground, blood pouring from a single gunshot wound to the forehead.

The Saviors erupted then, weapons drawn, eyes on the woods. Gunshots fired, taking out half the saviors.

Then people were filtering out of the woods, Morgan, Jesus, their family from Alexandria and their new friends from the Hilltop.

They killed every single one of the Saviors that had been standing around. Morgan shot Dwight in the shoulder, forcing him to drop his gun and fall to the ground.

Daryl screamed, and Morgan quickly untied him. He had to be the one to end Dwight.

Morgan handed him a knife, and he turned to stab Dwight in the stomach. He howled in pain.

Daryl didn't stop. He stabbed Dwight until he was almost completely covered in his blood.

Morgan finally pulled him off.

"You need to go check on Carol."

That made him stop and stand up.

Wiping his face, he ran to her, dropping to his knees by her head.

She was covered in blood too and wheezing. They were quite the pair.

"Hey, look at me," Daryl instructed softly, patting her face on the side where she hadn't been hit.

"Everything hurts," she whispered, voice raw.

"I know, but you have to stay alive. For me."

He kissed her forehead.

She smiled then.

"Don't worry. Nine lives, remember?"

 **Author's Note: She's alive! So, ideally, in my fantasy land, on tonight's episode, someone would feel the wrath of Lucille, but no one would actually die. They would be rescued, Negan and his men would die, and all would be well in the land. Of course, that is most definitely probably not going to happen, but at least I have this story to come back to.**

 **I've been trying to figure out who it is that they could possibly kill off, and I have no clue. What I do know, is that it's not looking good for our favorite couple. I hope that isn't the case, but I'm not sure. But whatever happens, it'll be okay. We'll make it. I'll find a way to go on somehow, I suppose. Haha. If anyone needs therapy or someone to talk to, you can message me! I know I'll definitely be freaking out, no matter what happens!**

 **Please feel free to leave a review and let me know what you thought! And I'd also like to know your theories for tonight's episode if you've got any! Also, excuse any errors because I'm sure there are a ton. Thanks!**


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